September 2, 2011

A thought for the Labor Day weekend.

"Our Western education teaches us caution. And so we hesitate before crossing the great waters. We wouldn't want, would we, to throw ourselves away? Realizing we might have been elected President of the United States, we want somehow to settle for a life not too ignoble. Well, there's always Madison Avenue. And it needs us to keep itself going."

- from John Cage's 1961 "Lecture on Commitment" in "A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings by John Cage", 1969.